


Ginger Beer

by ficklepig



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: holmestice, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Sick Character, Sickfic, missing person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:15:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8376949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficklepig/pseuds/ficklepig
Summary: The best way out is always through.   (Started out as a sick!fic and mutated, as germs will do.)   Original posted on Livejournal.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwissMiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissMiss/gifts).



> [](http://bivouack.livejournal.com/profile)[bivouack](http://bivouack.livejournal.com/) is always, always helpful

Before Sherlock can lift the knocker, John flings open the door and simultaneously turns away. "I wouldn't have asked at all," he calls over his shoulder, above the baby's yelling, "but Harry's got the day off and I've imposed too much on her already this month."

The baby's face is flushed so hard that even the roots of her wispy blond curls take on a reddish hue. As she screams she clutches and clutches her father's shirt, knotting wrinkled wet peaks into its shoulder. Her red wet mouth is curled open, several nubby white teeth gnashing toward Sherlock, wet swollen eyes glaring through him. Misery, misery, misery.

"It's no trouble, John. I was in the neighborhood." A transparent lie – nothing ever happens in this district, no one of interest lives here, and three of Sherlock's four lifetime visits have involved a quarter-mile walk from the Tube station directly to John's flat, with no exploratory side trips. He stopped at the Tesco Express before coming, so he didn't have to search John's neighborhood for supplies. Gloves. Nitrile gloves in medium and large, hand san (three brands), zinc spray, face masks, paper towels, electrolyte powder.

Sherlock plunks the bags down on the counter with a little flourish, and John roots through them. His brow furrows. "Did you get nappies?"

"Ahhh, I ... did not. It slipped my mind." Sherlock can pinpoint the moment he forgot: examining the ingredients on a packet of digestives, overwhelmed with a sudden nauseating vision of the same biscuits, mangled wet blobs, abandoned in sofa cushions, sticking to bare feet in the hall. He'd dropped the biscuits in with the rest of the items and whisked himself to the check-out before he could change his mind about coming.

"Look, I'm really sorry, but. I'd clean her up and leave her on a towel but with this flu, I just. I can't. Here, you know what? I could use a ten minute break. Sherlock, do you mind watching her for ten minutes while I run to the shop? I mean, I know you mind, and she'll hate it, but do this for me." He laughs like a sigh. "Let's set you up with the telly, and I'll be right back. Ten minutes."

Sherlock does not remove his leather gloves or his coat. The child is wrapped up in a fuzzy throw, and settled on the sofa. She pushes away the dummy, so John sets it by her cheek where she's cuddled up on one side, facing the squealing and bouncing purple animation on the DVD.

John pantomimes sneaking away; he lifts his keys and wallet quietly, tiptoes with exaggerated care through the foyer, and lifts his eyebrows in a kind of rueful salute to Sherlock as he slips out the door.

The baby isn't stupid, but she is very tired. She stares at the television for six minutes, slowly blinking her dark blue eyes, before she starts crying again. Sherlock perches on the other end of the sofa, answering an email on his phone, and lets her.

 

***

 

Sherlock does eventually take off his gloves and greatcoat. He has stepped out for Chinese and returned rather wet, in a cloud of garlicky steam. John is putting the baby down.

"Ginger," he calls her. "Gingerbeer, Gingerbread, Gingerbear, Gingerbean." Sherlock can hear him humming and cooing in the bedroom where they sleep.

This hits him with a sudden chill, and his expansive appetite – for dinner, for the movies John picked out, for the cozy chat and the catching up – collapses in on itself. John has moved out of his bedroom, and sleeps beside his daughter's bed, on a cot or perhaps a small futon bought for the purpose. There were clues, obvious, it makes sense, he doesn't care. Odd, though. When you return to a place, or a person, carefully prepared to engage with what they were – odd how disappointing it can be to find them otherwise. Obvious things, any of it could have been anticipated. He could have modeled this entire evening in his mind, and saved himself the trouble.

 

***

 

John, slouched against the opposite arm of the sofa, glows with fatigue, lo mein, and whisky.

"That is hilarious, Sherlock. I can't believe you didn't … oh, let me write it up. I really miss this."

"I'm not sure it rates an entry. The problem itself was trivial – there was only one way the bacterium could have been introduced, and only one opportunity to do it. Unless you withhold evidence until the end, evidence I had access to within three minutes of arriving on the site, any regular reader of your blog would have come to the same conclusion within the first few paragraphs."

"No they wouldn't."

"Then what's the point of writing it up?" Sherlock throws his hands up, exasperated. "If your readers can't grasp the simplest principles of deduction…." Sherlock trails off as John's complacent glow broadens into outright amusement, and he sees. "It made you laugh."

"The work is the bones of it, right? That's why there's a story at all. The plot. But I've told you, people want the feel of it, the flesh of it" – he bites his lip hard as he says this and squeezes lightly with his fingertips at some imagined fleshy protrusions about three feet from Sherlock's chest – "the skin and the smell of it. They want to be tantalized, even if they think they know how it will end up. They want the full experience. Jesus, I wish I could have seen that lady's face."

Sherlock laughs out loud. "It _was_ a treat!" He can imagine John at the scene; he truly wishes he'd been there to see that lady's face, and he almost says so. But the radio grizzles awake with a staticky organic noise, because he's awakened her. John sits up with sudden dutiful energy.

"Sorry! This is the part where we have to cuddle. It's been like this every night this week."

When at last John emerges from the small bedroom, arms enmeshed in his daughter's napped blue onesie and her dangling limbs, her hands clinging to the collar of his jumper like squashy pink sea stars, her face pressed possessively to his shoulder, Sherlock is dressed to go. He's tidied away the leftovers and mixed a new dry batch of electrolytes, which he has partitioned out into sandwich bags. He has used bleach to wipe down all the horizontal surfaces in the kitchen, as well as some vertical ones.

The child coughs. Sherlock pulls on his gloves.

"If you had a method, some kind of regular structure," he says, "this would be easier. There are more efficient ways to store your supplies, and I could send you some links that would help you manage sanitation – food residues, viruses—"

"Sherlock, I've been doing this for almost two years. There is a method, believe me. Also, I'm a doctor. I understand sanitation."

There is such an odd look on John's face. He was thinking of something else entirely when he'd entered the room, but Sherlock had ambushed him with this, this annoyance, this critique. What could he have been meaning to say? He needs a haircut, and more sleep. He needs friends, he needs to get out more.

"Stay in touch, John. Give my love to ... to Harry."

 

***

 

Sherlock does not vomit on Sally Donovan's shoes. He might as well have, for the strength of her reaction, which is well beyond necessary.

"For god's sake, make him go _home_ , sir," she cries out to Lestrade. "He shouldn't be on the scene." She turns to Sherlock. "It's painful even looking at you."

By the expression on Lestrade's face it is clear that his day just got two hundred percent longer. At the thought of the workload that will land on Sally's lap in his absence, Sherlock feels a vindictive little thrill, but it doesn't sit well. The headache that has dogged him since this morning swells again to a nauseating crescendo. He closes his eyes and breathes deliberately through it.

"All right Donovan, take him home. We aren't going to get anywhere for a while, anyway."

"Not—" Sherlock starts, but some silent exchange passes between Sally and Lestrade faster than he can catch, and she squawks in outrage.

"Not in MY car!"

"It isn't far, Donovan. And you won't have to look at the next body. Judging from the smell you should thank me."

To her credit, Sally doesn't snipe at Sherlock, or call him names, or take the corners too fast. She doesn't make him belt up, either.

When they pull to the kerb in front of Speedy's she says "Drink as much as you can, all right? It's a really bad flu going around. Don't be too stubborn to go to the doctor."

He realises she has been leaning slightly away from him for the whole trip. Pointless and ignorant – he feels sad for her. And _guilty_. "I must be very ill," he mumbles as he lurches up and into the street. "Send me the photos."

He gets three steps inside the door before he turns and walks back out. Sally is preoccupied with spraying something on her dash and doesn't see him before he makes it around the corner.

 

***

 

Sherlock doesn't offer payment to the cabbie – he has guessed that the man will wave it off, and he hasn't the energy to go through that little dance of admiration and kind regards. He receives a cringing look of sympathy. "Take care of yourself, Mister Holmes. You'll survive this!"

Sherlock sits dully on the front steps as the cab does a tight U-turn and sweeps away. A free lift to damn near Croydon. He can't think how he might have put the cabbie in his debt. Perhaps the fellow is deranged. No, that would have been interesting, and the ride was not: the hellish forty-six shivering minutes clutching a greasy takeout bag rescued from a bin ("In case y'hafta, you know...") will be deleted.

When John arrives, after dark, he smells revoltingly of pub chips. Sherlock has receded into a grim huddle against the door.

 

***

 

"Why didn't you call? Or text me?" John is trying to divest Sherlock of his coat and his gloves, and Sherlock is trying to subdue the reflex to swat him.

"Easier to wait," he bites out.

"Whatever you say, Sherlock. Sit down. I'm going to fuss over you for five minutes and then you can go to bed."

He preps a thermometer and flips on the kettle. He rubs Sherlock's back lightly as he manages to tug his coat and jacket off, and fetches a small fluffy robe to replace them. A very unpleasant sensation rolls through Sherlock's body and raises the hairs on his arms and legs as the weight and scent of the terry cloth settles across the back of his neck, and when the cold probe jabs beneath his tongue he groans and pushes away from the table.

"Settle down. Hold that there. Okay – you're running pretty hot, but it's not dangerous. Come on." He urges Sherlock up, steadying hands on his shoulders, straightening the bathrobe.

He leads him into the back bedroom, guiding him around a pile of boxes and onto the bed. "Sit still." Efficiently, he pops the button on Sherlock's jeans, lightly tugs his shirt free, then kneels to untie his shoes. "Socks?" Sherlock nods – they feel foul and cold. Everything touching him feels foul and cold, except John's hands, which feel like small friendly animals, darting lightly about the mossy rotten logs of his limbs.

"I'll find some pyjamas."

John returns with a steaming mug in one hand and a wad of clothing clutched in the other. Sherlock has wrenched back the top layer of covers and curled up on top of them.

"Do you want to get undressed?" John shakes out the pyjama bottoms, which are too short but which have a tie waist, and a woman's grey t-shirt with a print of a megacephalic cartoon bird.

"No. Later." Sherlock is almost inert. He has receded into a quiet dark space. The spinning clouds of pressure in his head and the pool of bile sloshing in his stomach are neutral features of a bleak landscape outside the thick cool walls of sleep.

 

***

 

He jolts upright and lurches into the en suite to purge himself, gathering enough wit between bed and porcelain to estimate that about three hours have passed. His face has begun to dribble, which is inconvenient. He finds the cooled mug in the darkness and lips tentatively at the contents. He bears down hard on his body's revulsion. Pills. Painkiller, good. Decongestant, good. Water. He pockets a wad of tissues, wriggles halfway into his shoes, and goes.

 

***

 

He returns before dawn to find John coddling a cup of tea in the kitchen. His face is intolerable. Grey with fatigue, concerned.

"What is going on, Sherlock? What? You're sick. You are seriously ill. Where is your coat? Are you on a case?"

Sherlock sniffs profoundly, crouches toward the kettle, pulls the bathrobe closer. It rides up under his arms. "Warning Mrs Hudson. I need one of those—" he waves a hand "—packets."

"In the front bath." John stands to retrieve the medicine, returns. "Why the hell didn't you call me? Jennifer stays at Harriet's on Friday nights – I could easily have come to you. You're always welcome here, always, but look at you."

"Someone waiting for me there. Telltale shoe print. Ordinarily …" he coughs on the gravelly ellipsis. "Probably only wanted to have a vigorous _chat_. I didn't have the energy."

"So you went back in the middle of the night? To warn Mrs Hudson? Why didn't you just call her?"

Sherlock knows why. He doesn't know why. There was a reason. John is completely unreasonable and he needs to stop this now. Sherlock puts his head in his hands and wills it away.

John gets up and clatters horribly with a spoon. He drifts near, comforting, repellent, and sets down a mug. Clunk.

"Christ, if you'd just called, I could have had half a dozen things on hand. I'll make some broth. There's half a packet of digestives—"

Sherlock is abruptly leaning over the sink, salivating heavily, breathing, breathing.

"Whoa." John lets him spit and rinse. "Back to bed."

But when the lamp comes on and Sherlock sees the light layer of dust on the side table, the paperback book, marked with a bit of yarn at about page 50 (a specific, a known piece of red yarn), the inviting feminine softness of the bed and its fading warmth, he balks. His throat makes a noise like a choked off whinny, and he shies away from the door. He fishes the tissues from his pocket and sheds the bathrobe, his shoes, his shirt, leans on a bookshelf and works off his jeans, using his feet to finish the job. He tears up a tissue and stuffs it into his nostrils. He creeps onto the sofa and gathers a throw pillow into his arms, lying with his face to the wall. He shudders and suppresses a cough.

John covers him. He brings more tissues. He brings the hot mug of medicated water. He gently pets the back of Sherlock's sweaty head.

"Before I let you sleep, I need to know – is that guy still at the flat? Is he coming back? I can take care of him."

"No. It's fine." He is trying to sleep. "She won't be back."

John goes quiet. Sherlock doesn't notice when he leaves.

 

***

 

Saturday is a very dull day. John checks Sherlock's temperature periodically, helps him to the loo. Sherlock gets a reprieve mid-afternoon when John takes leave to visit his daughter.

"Might as well bring her to my mother's tonight. She's getting her energy back. I hate to leave you alone."

Sherlock is grateful for the lethargy that keeps his mouth shut. He has awakened today repeatedly, yearning to weep and cling. He keeps hearing his mother's voice. He suspects that when he dozes off he is talking to himself.

"No, that's wonderful. Go."

"Yeah. Sorry. I guess I don't really have a choice."

John keeps fussing with his jacket, drifting into and out of Sherlock's space, deep lines down his face.

Sherlock thinks of promising that he won't disappear while John isn't looking. He has no business making promises.

"You're not the irresponsible one, John."

 

***

 

John is sleeping on Sunday when Sherlock leaves. Sherlock remembers to send a message from Baker Street, later in the afternoon.

 

***

 

Sherlock's phone vibrates, and he experiences an unexpected burst of delight when he sees the display.

"You never text anymore, John. Maybe you do need to start blogging again."

"You have to come. You have to come."

John's voice is high-pitched, urgent and unselfconscious. Its sheer strangeness sends Sherlock's heart skittering.

"It'll take me an hour. No, an hour and a half. Are you in immediate danger?" Sherlock is already cruising at top walking speed through the churchyard. It is near dark, and he is cutting across an overgrown section near the rear of the stone-walled acreage.

"No. No. It hurts. I can't think. Please, god, just get here."

Not Wolverton, he thinks. He barely dodges a collapsed headstone, dancing on one leg to clear it. Kingston?

"One hour."

Sherlock tries Harry's number. No response – she doesn't have voice messaging turned on. Irritated, he sets that aside for later consideration. He knocks a toehold into the crumbling mortar of the wall and shimmies over. As he leaps down to the pavement on the other side he realises he is not going to find a cab on this stretch of road. And the evening commute is headed the wrong direction to easily catch a lift.

 

***

 

John's flat is dark when he arrives, three hours later. No one answers, and the door is locked. The house is on the end of a row – he enters through a side window with some difficulty, and not without noise. The bars are well-anchored and would give anyone inside ample opportunity to escape or defend. No one does. He briefly considers the possibility of traps, but no. She would have considered the baby, at least. At least.

Sherlock finds his friend face-down on the kitchen tiles, with the phone on the floor beside him. He barely has time to panic before he sees that John has taken a small pillow and throw from the sofa, and has lain deliberately down on the cold floor, clutching them both under his head. He kneels and takes John's pulse under his jaw. Fast, strong.

John is dry and hot, and he breathes harder when Sherlock touches him, tiny moans on the exhale. Sherlock shakes a disposable thermometer strip loose from the handful in his exterior coat pocket. He runs his hand up under John's sweat-crusted t-shirt, places it under his armpit and moves his arm down over it. John is just responsive enough to cough horribly – a tight wheeze with a bubbling at the end.

Sherlock finds his way to the main bath and begins to fill the tub. He returns to check John's temperature. His emergency reserves of coldness well up to steady his hands and voice.

"John if this doesn't work, I'm calling an ambulance."

He maneuvers John down the hall and props him on the edge of the tub, then briskly tugs off his clothing. "Ups-a-daisy," he intones grimly as he lifts John's leg into the basin. John comes more awake.

"Oh, god. Ohhhh, god. Okay, just a minute," he pants. "It's cold."

"No, it's lukewarm. Sit in it if you can."

John complies, shakily lowering himself into the shallow water. "Okay, that's okay. That's okay." He breathes and rocks lightly forward and back, gently sloshing the water between his thighs.

Sherlock wets a flannel and squeezes water down his back, over his neck, again and again. No new moles. The curls at his nape, dark with dried sweat, darker with water. John reaches to run the tap, gasps and coughs, wipes his face with one hand. "Jesus. My head."

Sherlock eases John back and rolls a towel behind his neck. He runs more warm water, stirs it around John's feet with his hand, slops it up his legs. John's penis bobs, settles, dark and soft on his thigh. The fine hairs sway like seagrass. His toenails are overgrown. So are his fingernails, but not by as much. There are cloth impressions, creases and divots, down the side of his face and shoulder. He is three days unshaved. Sherlock mops his forehead with the flannel. One shallow pimple just under the hairline but no signs of a serious skin disorder.

He keeps this up for ten minutes, adjusting the water, sloshing, mopping. John accepts a thermometer strip into his mouth. Adjusting for difference in method ... his temperature has dropped about two degrees. Promising.

"Can you keep down a couple of paracetamol?"

"I just want to go to bed." Still slow and dazed. He is underweight by at least a stone – not something that's happened in the last three days. John shudders, passive as Sherlock towels him off and tugs him into a light blue terry robe he finds hanging behind the door.

Sherlock hands John a glass of water and four different tablets. They don't stay down long. Sherlock wipes his face and guides him to bed.

"I'm sorry." John is quiet and high-pitched again. "I'm sorry, Sherlock, it's my head."

"Yes. I had the same symptoms. Perhaps not as bad. Vertigo, nausea, headache like being kicked in the back of the skull. Well, no blood, but similar residual effects."

He throws back the covers – rumpled and stale from his own visit on the weekend – sits John down on the edge of the bed, roots through the dresser, and kneels to wrest a fluffy pair of Mary's socks onto John's feet. The complex and familiar surfaces of his damp toes and ankles. He stands, fishes in his coat pocket.

"Lie on your side," he orders John, who only looks at him dumbly. He guides him down to lie with his back toward the edge of the bed, one knee bent, flips up the hem of the bathrobe, peels open the foil bullet, places one hand on the damp white exposed flesh and smoothly inserts the suppository. John makes an odd open-mouthed sound and dutifully tightens and shifts his bum. Sherlock coaxes him closer to the center of the bed and covers him up.

"I'll wake you in fifteen minutes and you'll swallow some pills. If you don't, you are going to hospital."

John closes his eyes and seems to relax, but he breathes unevenly, sighing and grinding his teeth. He coughs abruptly and sits up with a gasp and a series of hacking coughs, hand to his throat. Sherlock gathers the paracetamol, guaifenesin, ranitidine. When his breathing eases, John swallows them without comment.

When John turns one side and pulls up the blankets, Sherlock settles into the rocker by the window. He listens to John wheeze, slower, and finally allows his gaze to wander over the objects in the room, the remainder of her things, her husband, the residuum. At last he turns off the lamp.

 

***

 

When John wakes in the dark he is lost.

"Hello?" he whispers. It seems safest. He is missing someone, he is worried about her, not her, the new one. "Hello? Jennifer? Ginger?" The bed is right and wrong, not the right time. "Mum?"

He sees the man in the rocker, a streak of street light over his forehead. John stares at him as he slowly resolves out of the blue shadows. The man is asleep upright with his mouth open and his head askew on his shoulder. His neck will cramp.

"Sherlock," he whispers. He coughs. The man doesn't move and John's voice takes on the ghost of an anxious whine. "Sherlock, come back to bed."

 

***

 

Sherlock wakes chilled and stiff. He tugs off his shoes and creeps between the sheets. John reaches to pull him closer, and breathes at him sickly, hot and damp. Sherlock keeps his arms between them.

"Is she gone?"

"Pardon me?" Sherlock's voice sticks in the middle, still rough with congestion. The baby? "She's with Harry."

"What?" John finds his focus near Sherlock's face. "Oh, Harry," with surprising disgust. He curls in on himself a little, runs one hand clumsily over Sherlock's forearm, and forgets the hand again. It lies with its knuckles lightly brushing the side of Sherlock's wrist. He relaxes, snorts awake, and turns away heavily.

He pulls the covers off with a restless jerk, then tugs them back up. He squirms back toward Sherlock with a frustrated exhale. "Hold me, please," impatient.

Sherlock recalls how every centimetre of his skin had ached, how fabric chafed. The craving for the needle, for the big gentle hands, for the warm plump chest and the scented georgette, for . He sidles up behind John, helps him free his arm from the clutches of the tangled bathrobe. He runs one palm firmly down John's side, over his hips, over the soft hair, rubbing the gooseflesh from the top of his thigh. John shifts up and Sherlock slips his arm underneath, clasping him around the chest. He notes the pectoral swell, the greasy hardness of the sternum.

"Your seams are hurting me," John complains.

"Come." Sherlock arranges himself upright against the headboard, a pillow between his legs and over his stomach, with a detached understanding of how things will now proceed. John moves tiredly into position and lays his head back, a heavy stone against Sherlock's clavicle, mashing his dense, stale hair with a soft crunchy whisper against the fabric of Sherlock's shirt.

John lies with his arms wide, one hand wrapped loosely around Sherlock's knee, the other restless in the sheets. He has one foot pulled up close to him and he bounces his bent leg from side to side, huffing, fidgeting. Sherlock massages his scalp with one hand and holds him close with the other arm.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna have a wank," John mumbles. Sherlock pets his shoulder in brief acknowledgment. John cups a hand over his genitals and tugs at his foreskin. He kneads at himself fretfully. "God, I need to sleep."

He pulls himself half-hard, then gives up. "Do me, Sherlock," he whispers. "Just, like you do."

Sherlock slides his hands down John's arms. He clasps the backs of his fingers, those small deft hands, in brief reassurance, then presses one palm to John's cock, assessing it, rolling it slowly left and right. The other hand runs over the fine hair on his belly and settles on his chest. John jerks as Sherlock's thumb runs lightly across a nipple. "Too much, too much."

Sherlock moves to cradle John's testicles, pulling gently at the skin. John's legs fall open wider. "Yeah."

He lies heavy on Sherlock, pressing back arrhythmically, breathing hot. He mumbles something, and whines. "That. Yeah, that." He is urgently stiff.

Sherlock releases a breath and shifts very slightly. John pulses hard in his hand and Sherlock glances down to watch a trickle of fluid run over the back of his thumb. He slides the tips of his fingers over the slippery crown of John's cock. John's mouth falls open and he rolls his head to one side. "Ahhh. Yeah. God. Your hands."

Sherlock keeps his hands close together, caressing the silky crease of John's thigh, the silky length of John's erection. John lifts one arm back to clumsily stroke Sherlock's hair, and Sherlock becomes aware of his scent and of his own blood pressure. He concentrates on maintaining an even stroke. Fatigue swells up through him like a very strong, very smooth drink; he thinks about using his mouth. John squirms and lies hard between his legs, breathing heavily.

"She wanted to fuck you."

" _What?_ "

"I told her about us. Before we got married, I told her, and she." John's voice pitches up – he gasps and puts his hand over Sherlock's. Sherlock moves again, shivery, squeezing too hard, and John guides him through a few more strokes before dropping his hand to clutch and twist the sheets.

"Ahhh oh god, Sherlock, she was so _warm_." He jerks and grabs the bed harder. "She was so warm inside, when you fucked her." His voice swerves up to a high pleading tone and he goes very heavy between Sherlock's legs. "She said, later, she said. I would hold her while you—ah—you fucked another baby into her."

He sobs and coughs, writhing and kicking. Sherlock's hand is slippery and he's holding John too hard around the ribs. He lets John loose to roll to one side, coughing and coughing over his thigh. He extricates himself, slow, stiff.

"I didn't want to share." John's voice cracks, tiny in the pillow. He gasps for air while he weeps. Sherlock finds a tissue and wipes his hand, one finger at a time. He rolls John onto his back, hands him several tissues, wiping off John's belly and balls while he coughs and blows his nose.

Sherlock arranges the covers over John and stands at the bedside, watching him fall asleep.

 

***

 

Sherlock lies with his eyes closed, listening to John creep through the flat. At last the door to the front bedroom opens. He can sense John in the doorway.

"You're in here."

"I needed to think." Sherlock opens his eyes. His fingers are wrapped around the bars of the crib next to the bed. He rolls toward John, who is wearing only plaid shorts and Mary's socks. "This is a good mattress. I thought you'd have something more makeshift, more ... self-punishing."

"It's a long-term arrangement." John looks ragged. He has a plaster on the back of his hand.

"You should go back to bed."

"Yeah, I will. Ta very much for the saline drip."

"You were badly dehydrated. I didn't want to wake you."

"It helped, thanks." John hesitates. "There was nothing _else_ in it?"

Sherlock waves the question off.

John shakes his head, turns slowly to the door. "I owe you one."

Sherlock considers this for a while as he drifts back toward sleep.

"Yes," he says finally. "Yes." 

*

**Author's Note:**

> There was eyebrow waggling about additional scenes when this was originally posted. It's been two years, and it's pretty clear that with one thing and another those weren't finished and probably won't be. I have no objections to anyone else taking on that task. Not even kidding. But thank you, those of you who cared!


End file.
